—Houston Chronicle (February 17, 1990)
“Faced with the all too real threats of poisonous pollution of land, sea, and air, and the complete extinction of many species of life on Earth, perhaps even our own, we might do well to examine the rituals, parables, and symbolism of spiritual beliefs that included regarding various aspects of nature as sacred—thus inviolable.”
—Conference on Gaia Consciousness, California Institute of Integral Studies (April 6–10, 1988)
“Many women now accept Goddess worship as a religion. … It is very spiritually strengthening to feel that women have been made in the image of the Goddess. It is important to realize it was a religion, not a cult. We have given it the taint of paganism. Paganism is a term coined to put down early religions.”
—San Francisco Chronicle (April 7, 1978)
“Calling a woman ‘sweetie’ or ‘doll’ isn’t affectionate, it’s sly and derogatory. It implies a status gap that immediately places the relationship on a one-up basis instead of one-to-one. The earliest law, government, medicine, agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, wheeled vehicles, ceramics, textiles and written language were initially developed in societies that worshipped the Goddess.
“Everyone, both genders, must strive together for an equalarchy … The ultimate robbery with violence [is] rape.”
—The Globe and Mail, United Kingdom (December 27, 1991)
“Now, it is time to think of the Supreme Being as both mother and father. It is kind of like having a broken home, to think of God exclusively as male or female. … The image of Eve as temptress and evil pervades our society today. Only with the arrival of the male gods were women expected to have no sexual contact prior to marriage, and to be reserved sexually for one man in marriage.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer (January 22, 1977)
“Most modern religions—particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam —believe in a masculine supreme being. Along with that belief has come the suppression of women and the development of theologies declaring women to be naturally inferior. … The Adam and Eve ‘myth’ was created to give theological foundation to the suppression of women. To me God is a supreme life force. Therefore, God must be both mother and father. A supreme being would have to be both male and female to be creator. … the world is entering a ‘new religious era’ in which all persons will be equal humans.”
—Pittsburgh Press (January 1977)
“As the shockwaves of the new feminist movement began to swirl around me in Berkeley, California, in late 1969, I realized how little even my most educated friends knew about the actual history of ancient Goddess reverence, and how important I believed it was for women to know about this history as a major factor in our feminist analysis.
“Few people realize that the heathens so feared in the Bible were praying to a woman, and that ‘pagan idols’ generally had breasts. For years, something has magnetically lured me into exploring the legends, the temple sites, the statues and the ancient rituals of the female deities, drawing me back in time to an age when the Goddess was omnipotent, and women acted as Her clergy, controlling the form and rites of religion. … I do hold the hope … that a contemporary consciousness of the once-widespread veneration of the female deity, as the wise Creatress of the Universe and all life and civilization, may be used to cut through the many oppressive and falsely founded patriarchal images, stereotypes, customs and laws that were developed as direct reactions to Goddess worship by the leaders of the later male-worshipping religions.
“Even after the publication of the book, I still preferred to present myself and my work solely as academic and feminist. After a great deal of inner struggle, I had finally acknowledged, although only to myself, the help and guidance I had so mysteriously received throughout the entire process. I had even come to wonder over the years if I was being used as a messenger for Her, by Her, simply because I was willing. This, I felt, must remain as my private knowledge.
“Perhaps, someday, I will feel free enough to tell the entire long strange story of the years of receiving Her guidance that, amidst much other knowledge, not only told me what to write but which libraries and museums, which books and journals, contained the documented evidence to support this knowledge, at times even the page numbers.
“For now, there is no doubt in my mind or heart that the Goddess is asking more and more of us to let others know about Her. I believe it is because the planet is in danger and She is asking us for help by our spreading knowledge of the ancient attitudes toward women’s wisdom about the sanctity of Earth and life. I am writing this on my fifty-eighth birthday, and as I write, I realize that Goddess energies and counsel have now guided my life for almost thirty years. Birthdays often cause us to look back over our lives, and looking back over mine, I see that, from the stubborn skeptic I once was, I have learned to totally trust the path along which She leads me.”
—Woman of Power: A Magazine of Feminism, Spirituality,
and Politics (Issue 15, October 1989)
“All of life is flux, change, process, continual creation. When we think of Goddess, it is as The Source, the Primal Fountain of Energy that continually creates, continually manifests itself ever anew in the universe. Each of us is a unique channel of that energy, and in that sense we are continually creating the world. Once we truly understand our own role as creator, we realize both our individual and collective importance in shaping change and evolution.
“When we have made that inner contact, we are in direct touch with Goddess guidance, and we can hear, see and feel Her energy flow through us as we learn to trust and follow that guidance. May you always swim in the fountain of Her energy as She flows in and through you.”
—Green Egg (Vol. XXI, No. 81, Beltane 1988)
“Mine was the first book to be written that gathered the material together and presented it from a feminist point of view. My investigation of the worship of a female deity really was motivated to a great extent by the image of women presented by Judaism and Christianity … The woman known as Eve. … The women’s movement has done so much to release feminine power into the world. The addition of women’s spirituality as they regain their heritage gives the movement new dimension. I really wrote When God Was a Woman so women could learn to understand their inner selves. …
[Interviewer asks, ‘What has the Goddess come to mean to you?’ Merlin answers:] “She has become my life. I basically let her lead me. She is my guide through life. There is no particular image or name that I connect with her, but it is an inner understanding.”
—Aquarian Voices (November/December 1989)
“The original idea of the book was basically to say to women, ‘We are not second-class citizens; we were first-class citizens,’ and to explain how this happened, how historically it happened. I started trusting that if I followed along with leaving my life open enough to random chance that the Goddess would keep feeding me information. …
“I really see the emergence of the Goddess as, at this point, not only political and feminist, but a whole level of transformation of dimensional—almost into a fourth-dimensional—time perception of what’s going on in the world and knowing that everything is in constant flux all the time and that we don’t have to grasp it and make it stay still, but flow with it and allow ourselves to know that in any given moment we’re going to be changing.
“We don’t have to get hysterical and wild. We just have to say we know with dignity that we’re correct.”
—“Reclaiming the Goddess: An Interview with Merlin Stone,”
by Barbara Booher, Common Ground (Winter 1989/90)
“All living things embody the Goddess … I do see the male energy as being possibly very positive. I think what’s sad in our society is that males have been conditioned to be other than who they naturally are. Many men assume they have to take this sort of warrior stance. …
“I think there is some force
in the universe, that I would call the Goddess, some flow that is saying, ‘Women, wake up and start telling these people what they are doing. Point out the insanity of it.’ We must think for ourselves, not follow the rules and regulations like sheep simply because the rules are there. I think we can keep making our world better and better, if everybody is willing. I don’t see it as a confrontation or a battle. I see it basically as consciousness-raising.
“We must get in touch with that divine spark within ourselves and realize we’re better than the wars and fighting.”
—Inner Resources, Los Angeles (Summer 1987)
“Hearing Her, seeing Her, praying to Her, worshipping Her, talking to Her, should be considered normal.”
—Merlin Stone, unpublished lecture notes (1978)
“Spiritual imagery is, in a sense, visual prayer. Here, in this gallery, you are now surrounded by prayers of shapes and forms and colors, expressed by many fine artists. Try, for a very quiet moment or two, to ‘hear’ these prayers. You will find that what is sacred within you enables you to listen and respond to what is sacred within others. It is this sacred spark in each of us that joins together what we call Goddess.”
—The Goddess Show, Merlin Stone, juror (Washington Women’s Arts Center, 1984)
Excerpts from At the Leading Edge
by Michael Toms
MT: Merlin, how did you choose the title of your book When God Was a Woman?
MS: My original title was The Paradise Papers, which was meant to explain that it was an exposé of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The book was first published in England under the title The Paradise Papers: The Story of the Suppression of Women’s Rites. When it was later being prepared for publication in the United States, the editor decided When God Was a Woman—which is a line in the book—was the most wonderful line.
MT: What prompted you to do the many years of research required to put that book together? What was the motivation?
MS: I’m not exactly sure what really drove me on. It was like a compulsion or an addiction. So much information was just being sort of dumped in my lap; things just kept coming up on their own that were begging to be put into the book. Looking back, I have the feeling that there was a female energy in the universe that wanted this information out, and that, as long as I was willing to cooperate as an instrument of that goal, I would be used in that way.
MT: Did you have any idea, when the book was published, that it would have such a life of its own?
MS: When I was writing it, I thought that maybe ten people in the world would bother to wade through all these unfamiliar names and places. This material was something that almost no one knew about. … I’m very happy that the information about ancient Goddess reverence has become more familiar.
MT: How did it affect your life—both the act of writing it and its longevity? Did it transform your life?
MS: It certainly did. I think that it was the writing of the book, and the researching, that really transformed my life. I genuinely felt that there was an energy that was moving me along, an energy that I learned to trust after a while. I’ve just been sort of following an understanding—an understanding that I’m being used, moved along, and that I will be as long as I’m willing to be. I don’t feel that it’s anything against my will. I have to be willing to be used in this way, and I always am. The flow of energy of the Goddess is very much within, very much within our bodies. It can be experienced. It can be felt. That is the Goddess speaking to me, telling me what She wants me to do. I always know what I’m supposed to do. I always know what I’m supposed to do next because I get excited and energized by it. There really is a tremendous change happening in our society. …
It’s very simple: Men and women are people. All we have to do is simply act like people: deal with each other lovingly, relate to each other in cooperative rather than competitive ways, sympathize and empathize with the needs of one another—whether it be our lover, our husband, our wife, our children, or whomever. …
One of the major concerns now within women’s spirituality is the preservation of the planet. We’re trying to develop a sense not only of planetary consciousness but also of planetary conscience. This will make us aware of what’s happening to all other races of people, to all other species of animals, to the trees, to the rivers, and to all else that has suffered from our ignorance. Each of us acts or doesn’t act, and that creates the future.
Earth is our home. Whether or not they want to build space colonies, we can’t think of Earth as something to use up and toss away like so many other things in our toss-away society. We really have to wake up and think about this planet as our home, and as the home for our children and our children’s children, because that is the Goddess energy. It is that life-energy. If we destroy life on the planet, we destroy our home; we destroy our Mother.
—At the Leading Edge (Larson Publications, 1991)
“I’m not any kind of separatist. I love men, women, everything and everyone. I am an ardent feminist. It’s a matter of changing stereotypes. I’m for evolution. I think the divine is sacred in all of us. My personal spiritual beliefs give me a tremendous amount of strength.”
—In Print, “Great Goddess” (Vanguard Press, 1986)
[contents]
unraveling the myth
of adam and eve
Unraveling the Myth of Adam and Eve
Chapter 10 from When God Was a Woman
When first I started upon my investigation of the worship of the female deity, it was to a great extent motivated by the image of woman presented by Judaism and Christianity—the woman known as Eve. The further I explored the rites and symbolism of those who revered the Divine Ancestress, the more convinced I became that the Adam and Eve myth, most certainly a tale with a point of view, and with a most biased proclamation for its ending, had actually been designed to be used in the continuous Levite battle to suppress the female religion. It was, perhaps, a more updated version of the dragon or serpent myth whose vestiges are found in the biblical Psalms and the book of Job.
The female faith was a most complex theological structure, affecting many aspects of the lives of those who paid Her homage. It had developed over thousands of years and its symbolism was rich and intricate. Symbols such as serpents, sacred fruit trees and sexually tempting women who took advice from serpents may once have been understood by people of biblical times to symbolize the then familiar presence of the female deity. In the Paradise myth, these images may have explained allegorically that listening to women who revered the Goddess had once caused the expulsion of all humankind from the original home of bliss in Eden.
Sacred Snakes and Prophetic Vision
Let’s begin with the serpent. It seems that in some lands all existence began with a serpent. Despite the insistent, perhaps hopeful, assumption that the serpent must have been regarded as a phallic symbol, it appears to have been primarily revered as a female in the Near and Middle East and generally linked to wisdom and prophetic counsel rather than fertility and growth as is so often suggested.
The Goddess Nidaba, the scribe of the Sumerian heaven, the Learned One of the Holy Chambers, who was worshipped as the first patron deity of writing, was at times depicted as a serpent. At the Sumerian town of Dir the Goddess was referred to as the Divine Serpent Lady. The Goddess as Ninlil, who at times is said to have brought the gift of agriculture and thus civilization to Her people, was said to have the tail of a serpent. In several Sumerian tablets the Goddess was simply called Great Mother Serpent of Heaven.
Stephen Langdon, the archaeologist who led some of the earliest excavations of Sumer and later taught at Oxford, asserted that Inanna, then known as Ininni, was closely connected with serpent worship. He also described Her as the Divine Mother who Reveals the Laws. He wrote that the Goddess known as Nina, another form of the name Inanna, perhaps an earlier one, was a serpent goddess in the m
ost ancient Sumerian periods. He explained that, as Nina, She was esteemed as an oracular deity and an interpreter of dreams, recording this prayer from a Sumerian tablet: “O Nina of priestly rites, Lady of precious decrees, Prophetess of Deities art Thou,” and commenting that, “The evidence points to an original serpent goddess as the interpreter of dreams of the unrevealed future.” Several sculptures unearthed in Sumer, which date from about 4000 BC, portray a female figure with the head of a snake.
Writing of Elam, just east of Sumer, where in earliest times the Goddess reigned supreme, Dr. Walther Hinz tells us: “… part of this individuality [in Elam] consists of an uncommon reverence and respect for eternal womanhood and in a worship of snakes that has its roots in magic … Even the pottery of the third and fourth millennia swarms with snakes …”
Ishtar of Babylon, successor to Inanna, was identified with the planet known as Venus. In some Babylonian texts this planet was called Masat, literally defined as prophetess. Ishtar was depicted sitting upon the royal throne of heaven, holding a staff around which coiled two snakes. One seal from Babylon, which shows Ishtar holding the serpent-entwined scepter, was inscribed, “Lady of Vision of Kisurru.” Ishtar was elsewhere recorded as “She who Directs the Oracles” and “Prophetess of Kua.” Babylonian tablets offer numerous accounts of priestesses who offered prophetic advice at the shrines of Ishtar, some of these very significant in the records of political events.
Even in the Babylonian-Kassite myth, Tiamat was recorded as the first divine being. According to this legend, Tiamat originally possessed the Tablets of Destiny, which, after Her murder, were claimed as the property of Marduke. Tiamat was described in this myth as a dragon or serpent. The actual association of the serpent with the female deity, all through the texts and inscriptions of Sumer and Babylon, was probably the very reason this symbolism was used in the Indo-European myths.
Merlin Stone Remembered Page 11